


A Dollar and A Half

by Byunbaeked



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Might add more tags later, a oneshot, shadow is sonic's side hoe, short and kinda crappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byunbaeked/pseuds/Byunbaeked
Summary: Shadow could buy a pack of Jello for $1.50, but what if he wanted two packs? That's $3.00 and that's too much. But there's a deal at the grocery store - 2 for $2.50 - and he'd save 50 cents. But couldn't all of this be avoided if the 50 cents wasn't there? Why did the Jello have to be $1.50? Why couldn't it be a whole dollar or two? Why couldn't Shadow be whole?ORShadow deals with being Sonic's side hoe and some drama ensues.
Relationships: Amy Rose/Sonic the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog/Sonic the Hedgehog
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	A Dollar and A Half

**Author's Note:**

> Hey uh, this is my first work on this website. I just decided to make this little oneshot on a whim and went from there. I could potentially add more chapters to this, but as of now this will be the only chapter. If you're reading this I hope you end up liking how it turns out.

“Cherry, huh? I’m more of a strawberry kind of guy myself, heh.”

Shadow didn’t know that people identified themselves as Jello flavours. He also didn’t know why the hedgehog cashier ringing out his items - a bottle of vodka, a pack of gum and a pack of Jello - was starting a conversation with him when there was a line of customers behind him waiting to pay for their groceries. The pink hedgehog beside him didn’t seem to mind though, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.

He decided to reply anyway. 

“Just wanted to change things up a bit.”

The hedgehog gave him a smirk and rang his items through. After pressing some buttons on the keyboard in front of him he said, 

“Twenty-seven sixty-seven please.”

Shadow’s eyebrows raised in confusion. “How much was the vodka?” he asked.

“Twenty ninety-nine.”

“The gum?”

“ Two dollars.”

“What about the Jello?”

“A dollar and a half.”

Shadow’s mouth went ajar. “A dollar and a.. What?”

The blue hedgehog’s feet tapped against the floor, but he looked anything but impatient. 

“A dollar and a half, I said. Oh, and the rest is tax.” The cashier tapped against the computer screen; it showed all the calculations. 

Shadow frowned. “Sir-”

“Call me Sonic.” Sonic pointed at his own flimsy, crooked name tag.

Before the ebony hedgehog could speak again, Sonic spoke first. 

“Y'know, you could get two for two fifty. One for you and that special someone.” He winked and Shadow’s first instinct was to look to his left. He thanked chaos that none of the other customers saw.

Then, Shadow faced Sonic. “Sure.” The cashier’s grin grew even wider.

“Perfect! Lucky for you..” Sonic bent down underneath the register - Shadow immediately took an interest in the floor below him - and rose back up with another box of Jello.

“I have an extra box of strawberry.” With that, he scanned the box and placed it on the conveyor belt. Shadow either saw him wink again, or he was crazy.

“What’s my total?” Shadow managed to spit out.

“Twenty-eight eighty. Cash or credit?”

Shadow took out his debit card and slid it inside of the card machine. “Cash-back, please.”

Sonic took out the money and receipt, giving it to the hedgehog along with a pen. “Please sign your initials here..”

Shadow did what he was asked and gave it back to Sonic to sign. He took longer than usual to sign it, the ebony noted, but once he got it back, he didn’t think anything of it. That is, until he read it over and his bag of groceries slipped out of his hand. 

“Oh!” The pink hedgehog beside him caught the bag before it fell, which Shadow was ever so grateful for. 

She made sure everything in the bag was okay before giving it back to Shadow. “You wouldn’t want that vodka to break.” She joked. 

Shadow smiled at her. “Thank you,” he faced Sonic, “to the both of you.” 

With that, he left the grocery store, entered his car, read the receipt again.. and softly hit his head against the dashboard. He read the receipt one more time:

_ “Save that Jello for me tonight @ 10 ; )” _

Shadow stared blankly at the small piece of paper. The audacity of Sonic, to flirt with him, wink at him constantly, give him a note, hold the  _ entire  _ line up.. to do all of that..

Right in front of his girlfriend.

* * *

“Don’t worry, Amy didn’t notice a thing.”,

Shadow heard Sonic say in the living room. He took the tray of Jello shots out of the fridge: half cherry and half strawberry, just like the blue hedgehog had requested.

“She’ll find out about us sooner or later.” Shadow argued as he walked to the living room.

“I mean, she hasn’t noticed yet, and this has been going on for awhile, so..” 

Sonic had a point. What started out as a simple exchange at the grocery store about three months had turned into a routine, a cycle. A rhythm that was slowly beating faster and faster, daring to meet the pace of Shadow’s own heart. To Sonic, it was simple: meet every Saturday night, give into his temptations, and go back to the love of his life. To Shadow, it was more complicated: meet every Saturday, give into his temptations, and somehow survive the rest of the week without dwelling too much on the fantasy of one day having more than just one day to spill his heart out.

It was clear to Shadow that he and Sonic had different intentions. He had never asked Sonic why he needed him when he had a girlfriend, and at this point it was too late. Their relationship was already established and he was too far deep to risk losing the only aspect of his life that made him happy. 

Shadow put the Jello tray on the coffee table and sat on the couch beside his sig-- his friend. 

“Which ones are strawberry flavoured?” Sonic asked as he eyed the plastic shot cups.

“Shouldn’t you know, since you're such a  _ strawberry kind of guy? _ ” 

Sonic laughed. Shadow’s heart ached, and he grinded his teeth. Why did his laugh have to make him feel this way? The hedgehog was just laughing at a crappy joke! But he loved his laugh, oh so much.

He loved him. And that was the problem.

Sonic practically inhaled the Jello as the two watched  _ Friends _ , only because Sonic promised Amy that he’d finish the episode that they started on Friday night and couldn’t finish the next day. Sonic was a busy hedgehog on Saturdays. Shadow knew that for sure. Speaking of the ebony hedgehog, he was paying less attention to the T.V and more to-

he looked away. They had a deal. 

  
  


“Don’t tell anyone, and don’t catch feelings”, he remembered Sonic say, as they laid in Shadow’s bed together. It seemed simple enough, but that was before the deal was broken in the first place.

It was their little secret. The problem was, Shadow didn’t want it to be a secret anymore.

But as he and Sonic watched the television show that he didn’t want to watch, because it was for the girl he didn’t necessarily care about, Shadow knew his place. He was Sonic’s, but Sonic wasn’t his.

Eventually the episode ended, the shots were all finished, and the temperature rose. Soon the living room was ditched and instead Shadow’s bedroom was the hotspot. It was the best and the worst part of his night, because as much as he loved when it lasted, he knew it wouldn’t last forever.

At midnight, Sonic gave Shadow his last kiss for the week, and left. He had a girlfriend to tuck into bed after all. And once again, Shadow was alone with a bed soaked in sweat and a couch soaked in tears.

* * *

“Why do you put yourself through this, Shadow?” Rouge asked. 

All Shadow could do was shrug and swish his lemonade around. Rouge took that as her queue to keep going.

“You can do so much better. You don’t have to settle as someone’s side piece!”

“I know, but..maybe..” Shadow took a sip, “maybe one day he’ll change.”

“Change what? Shadow, he’s been with Amy for  _ two years _ .”

“Maybe he feels trapped in the relationship and I'm his only outlet.”

“Is that supposed to give him any leniency?”

“...”

“Shadow,” Rouge took a sip of her coffee, “you’re not an idiot. You know what’s best for you.”

Shadow sighed. “Yeah. I do.”

“Then you know what to do.”

* * *

Shadow didn’t go to the grocery store the following Saturday. He didn’t receive any calls, or texts. He wanted to call Sonic, apologize to him for practically standing him up - when the doorbell rang. What if it’s..?

As he walked to the door, he tried to stay calm and collected. But the butterflies in his stomach giving him anxiety, giving him some  _ hope _ ..

Left when he opened the door and saw Rouge holding a bag of groceries and some tequila.

“Sorry to burst your bubble.” The bat smiled sadly. 

It was then that Shadow realised that Sonic didn’t care about him, but he had a friend that did.

* * *

“Go on, send it!” Rouge pushed the ebony hedgehog, verbally and physically, as she giggled. It was obvious that she’d had more than her fair share of alcohol. 

“Maybe it’s too late.” Shadow quietly said. It was almost midnight.

“Send the text, you simp!” 

Shadow paused, took a deep breath, and sent the text.

**_“Hey, i dont think this is going to work out”_ **

The anxiety, restlessness, and regret ate him from inside, but it was too late to unsend the message. Sonic had already read it and was typing.

“What’s he saying?” Rouge stared at the phone, waiting for a reply.

**_“Wdym”_ **

He typed for almost a minute just to say that? Shadow quickly replied:

**_“I mean us”_ **

**_“What we do every weekend and i think we should stop”_ **

Was this really the end? How would he move on? Both he and Rouge had nothing to say as they watched Sonic type again.

**_“Oh”_ **

**_“Ok”_ **

Shadow and Rouge stared at the phone, and then at each other. Then, Shadow went through his phone contacts, and blocked the same hedgehog he would never think of ignoring only a week before.

* * *

  
  


It had been more than two weeks since Sonic and Shadow broke things off. It was a plain wednesday that Shadow had free, so he decided to go grocery shopping - avoiding a familiar cashier there, of course. 

But as it turned out, he didn’t need to avoid him. He wasn’t in the grocery store at all. 

Shadow finished picking up his groceries and finally went to a cashier aisle. The cashier seemed new: a silver hedgehog with an impressive head of fur and a not so impressive IQ. But Shadow didn’t mind, watching the newbie fumble around with the prices and the keyboard was entertaining to him.

“One hundred and eleven dollars and thirty cents is your total, sir!” The hedgehog exclaimed.

“You forgot the Jello.” Shadow said to - what was his name? He read the cashier’s name tag: Silver. 

“Oh! Sorry about that.” Silver nervously chuckled and rang the box of Jello through. “Are you interested in two for two dollars and fifty cents?”

Shadow gave a small smile. “No thank you.”

“Oh it’s fine, I get it! Besides, I think it’s a rip off. Sure, you can buy a pack of Jello for a dollar and fifty cents and if you bought two without the sale, it’d be three dollars so I  _ guess  _ you’re saving fifty cents. But it’s only fifty cents less for a pack of Jello! They could’ve at least lowered the price down to two dollars, so why is that extra fifty cents there? Why couldn’t the price be two dollars instead of-”

“Two dollars and a half.”

Silver paused. “Two dollars and a half?” 

Shadow swallowed. “Uh.. yeah.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it kind of sounds like the two dollars is missing another half. The half sounds lonely - shouldn’t be whole?” Silver smiled sheepishly.

Shadow made a bigger smile back. 

“Yeah. It should.”

* * *

That night, Shadow came home happier than usual. Maybe he actually could move on from being just what Rouge called a “side piece”. Maybe he could find someone who loved him just as much as he used to love Sonic. Maybe.. Just maybe.. He could love them back. Shadow decided that he could. The ebony hedgehog turned on the T.V and eventually fell asleep.

Until the doorbell jolted him awake. Who was at his door at - Shadow checked his phone -  _ two in the morning? _ Maybe Rouge came with more tequila. 

As Shadow groggily walked to his door he figured that he’d just let Rouge politely know that he wasn’t up to drinking tonight, and ask her to go home. As Shadow opened the door he said, 

“Rouge, it’s two in the mor-”

Sonic stood at the door, tears streaming down his face and shivering. He had come with packed garbage bags around him, a backpack swung on his shoulder, and tension as thick as smoke. Shadow’s eyes widened.

“H-hey Shads. Can I come in.. please?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> And that's the end - for now, I guess. I hope you liked it. Any constructive criticism is helpful. Have a good night!


End file.
